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The flavour of Kolkata

The city is known for its old alleys. One such is shot by Atanu Pal.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

The political circus: Rezzakism

Abdur Rezzak Mollah, the veteran politician of West Bengal, has never been known to measure his words. His verbal ‘gems’, often at the expense of his own partymen, have been widely circulated in the media when he was with CPI(M) and entertained many. As it is common knowledge, he had been expelled by CPI(M), formed his own political outfit (Bharatiya Nyaybichar Party) and got expelled from it (!) before joining Trinamool Congress earlier this year with which he had great enmity as a communist. He kept a low profile since then.

But his remarks in an interview with ABP Ananda on 20th April showed his return to ‘true form’. It happened when the interviewer asked for his opinion on actors joining politics. There is a common chord among all who were at the receiving end of his bouncers and no prizes for guessing it- all of them are actors. Two of them are MPs from his own party- Dev and Moon Moon Sen and the other one is a candidate in the ongoing assembly elections from Howrah district for BJP- Roopa Ganguly. Rezzak was certainly back to the form with a bang, considering he has just been censured by the election commission for violating the code of conduct the verbal way. By the way, the interviewer was quite embarrassed as he was a well-known actor too- Dhritiman Chattopadhyay.

The nature of the remarks varies but. While he dismissed Dev as ungentlemanlike, Moon Moon’s effectiveness as a politician was questioned. But the fiercest and the most vulgar one was reserved for Roopa. He took a dig at her smoking habit and her multiple partners (who he said he knew), and compared her to "Draupadi'- a role which brought Roopa national fame on television.

We’ll soon know the outcome. But here is the immediate thought. Due to his strong political acumen and mass following, he used to get away with all this careless talk while he was in CPI(M). But Trinamool is no CPI(M) who will hold discussions at the highest state level and wait for the ‘recommendation’ of the concerned committee entrusted to decide his fate. Here everything is decided by the supremo and she can even make her once-trusted second-in-command redundant.

He also hadn’t taken note of the fact that it was his party chief who had reportedly handpicked Dev to fight the election. Before that, Dev had no direct connection with Trinamool. So Rezzak’s bouncer hits two persons- his target and his party chief and amounts to ridiculing her political wisom. Even Moon Moon Sen must have been the captain’s pick as her selection as a candidate for assembly election had no backstory. So the outcome of his remark is expected from the top and shouldn’t take a long while.

About his remarks on Roopa, I condemn them in the first place. But honestly speaking, I don’t find it out of place coming from the member of a party where a well-known sitting MLA and ex-minister questioned the character of the Park Street rape victim and another woman MP put a ‘perspective’ to the said rape to kind of justify it and even said that it was the result of a disagreement between a woman and her customers. Only that this time it is politically sensitive and wrongly timed (the election is going on and an evidence like television footage can be brought to the notice of the election commission). Last heard, Rezzak has showed no repentance for the remarks. I am not sure whether the outcome of this can come from the same place as the one of the other remarks, because Roopa is one of the harshest critics of Mamata Bandopadhyay.